New Delhi: “This has been such a prolonged event, I am actually surprised that he survived so many years,” Kash Heed, a former Vancouver police chief and former British Columbia solicitor general, had said after the killing of Ripudaman Singh Malik in 2022.
Malik was one of two acquitted in the 1985 Kanishka bombing, which claimed the lives of all 329 people on board the Air India Flight 182 from Montreal to Mumbai via London on 23 June 1985.
The Canadian Sikh businessman was described as a ‘man with many enemies,’ especially after his letter to Narendra Modi in 2022, praising the Indian Prime Minister for taking “positive steps” to “redress” long pending “Sikh demands”. This is what may have irked Sikh separatist and Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar who was initially suspected of having Malik killed over the latter’s “pro-India stand” and “change of heart,” as well as his decision to shun radicalism and the demand for a homeland for Sikhs.
One report by News18 even cited intelligence sources to suggest the killing was carried out by Sikh separatists backed by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Malik was found dead in his Tesla outside his family business in Surrey, British Columbia, with multiple gunshot wounds, on 14 July 2022. Canadian police arrested two men in their early 20s, Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez, who pleaded guilty to the killing last month but are yet to give up the name of who hired them to carry out the hit.
Less than a year after Malik’s killing, Nijjar, who once reportedly labelled him a ‘qaum ka gaddar,’ (traitor of the community) for warming up to Indian authorities, was also killed in the same area in Surrey as Malik.
Although Nijjar’s killing has become a diplomatic flashpoint between India and Canada, with Ottawa alleging the involvement of New Delhi, in her testimony before Canada’s foreign interference inquiry last month former national security adviser Jody Thomas claimed initial investigation suggested Nijjar was killed as retaliation for Malik’s murder.
“Nijjar’s killing was the second high-profile murder in the same gurdwara,” Thomas said, adding the “initial hypothesis” was that it was “retaliation” for Malik’s murder almost exactly a year earlier.
Thomas also said Canadian authorities learnt by way of “very good intelligence and policing work” that “there was a high probability that this was an extrajudicial killing”.
India has disputed any clear link between its officials and Nijjar’s killing, maintaining Canada is yet to share a “shred of evidence” with Indian authorities to back its claims.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice indictment in the alleged plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal counsel for Sikhs for Justice (SFJ)—an outfit banned in India—mentions that former Indian spy Vikash Yadav had sent a video of Nijjar’s dead body slumped in his car to co-accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national currently lodged in a prison in Brooklyn. Pannun, incidentally, was also Nijjar’s lawyer.
With Malik’s killers set to appear before a court in Canada for sentencing, ThePrint takes a look at some questions about the high-profile murder: Did Sikh separatists want Malik dead? Was Nijjar behind the murder? And was Nijjar’s murder retaliation for Malik’s killing?
Also Read: ‘Air India ki flight mat lo’ — how Canadian neglect led up to Kanishka bombing 38 yrs ago
‘Will probably never know’ who ordered hit
Malik’s family migrated from Lahore to Punjab’s Ferozepur just before the Partition. He later moved to the UK, and then to Canada in the 1970s along with his four sons and a daughter. During his time there, he founded the Khalsa Credit Union (KSU) and two charities, the Satnam Trust and the Satnam Education Society—which ran several Khalsa schools.
His clothing import business, Papillon Eastern Imports, was incorporated in 1975.
Former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh, who first met Malik in the 1970s, described him to the Vancouver Sun in 2022 as a “ganja-smoking hippie who had a ponytail” and later “turned into an extremist warrior”.
Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez, the duo that shot Malik, had conducted a recce of his business a day before the killing. They fired at least seven shots at the 75-year-old as he was sitting in his Tesla outside his business in Surrey’s Payal Business Centre.
Both Fox and Lopez have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder—when evidence suggests the killing was intentional but not premeditated. But investigators maintain the duo are silent on who ordered the hit. According to the agreed statement of facts in the Canadian court, both shooters confessed that they were hired to kill Malik, but investigators have not come across any evidence to suggest who hired them to execute the killing.
Lopez’s lawyer Gloria Ng told Global News last month, “What we know from the agreed statement of facts is that there was some type of financial incentive that was involved in the commission of this crime, but in terms of any other specifics, it is another one of those situations where unfortunately it is just something that we as people on the outside will probably never know.”
Calling for those who ordered the hit to be brought to account, Malik’s family has maintained that the “work (to catch those who ordered the hit) is not complete”.
“Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez were hired to commit this murder. Until parties responsible for hiring them and directing this assassination are brought to justice, the work remains incomplete,” the family said in a statement last month after the two men pleaded guilty.
The Nijjar-Malik tussle
Journalists from India and abroad, along with Indian investigating agencies have suggested that Sikh separatists including Nijjar wanted Malik out owing to the shift in his stance on India, and the killing was a result of differences that had cropped up over the years.
Malik was granted an Indian visa in 2019, after his removal from the blacklist of individuals barred from entering the country. Three years later, he wrote to Modi praising him effusively in a letter.
“I am writing you this to express my dear heartfelt gratitude for the unprecedented positive steps taken by yourself to redress long-reading Sikh demands and grievances including elimination of blacklists that restricted visit to India of thousands of Sikhs living abroad, grant of passports and visas to asylees and their families, reopening of hundreds of 1984-riots closed cases leading to conviction and jail term for some, declaring 1984-riots as ‘genocide’ by then Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh on the floor of the House, giving compensation or Rs 5.00 lakh per family of the anti-Sikh genocide victims, opening of Sri Kartarpur Saheb Corridor facilitating pilgrims from India to visit the revered place of our first Master Guru Nanak Dev Ji,” it read.
BJP national secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa had at the time praised Malik, saying he “dared to voice Sikh sentiments and spoke so honestly” while writing to Modi.
Malik’s India visit in 2019, letter to Modi in 2022 as well as his decision to shun the demand for a separate homeland for Sikhs had led to a palpable discord in Sikh separatist circles in Canada. He was also allegedly harassed by separatist groups upon his return from India.
For instance, Malik had obtained permission to print copies of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib at his facility in Surrey from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). But the move was met with opposition from Nijjar and his associates who floated a ‘rumour’ campaign against Malik, alleging that the Sri Guru Granth Sahib printed at the facility had errors. In a January 2021 speech, Nijjar even allegedly called for a social boycott in a speech from the Guru Nanak temple premises and asked people to teach Malik a lesson.
And in June 2022, Akal Takht jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh had to cancel a visit to Surrey after receiving ‘threats’ of gherao from a Sikh separatist group. This group also in a letter accused the jathedar of favouring Malik.
Malik had then called out “anti-India elements” as “enemies of Sikhs,” alleging they were working at the behest of foreign governments. He went on to accuse Nijjar and associate Moninder Boyle—former president of the Sri Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara—of bullying him.
Asked about Malik’s killing, Nijjar had denied any role in it, telling the Vancouver Sun in July 2022: “I was very shocked. He was a good personality in the community.” A day later, Nijjar told The Hindustan Times that he had “no issue” with Malik.
However, days before he was killed, Malik reportedly told journalist Sameer Kaushal, of Sher-E-Punjab radio, “Control of gurdwaras in Canada has now gone into hands of those who are undisciplined and do not care for Sikh maryada (dignity)”. He also alleged the same people had recognised Jagtar Hawara as jathedar of the Akal Takht.
A one-time Babbar Khalsa militant, Hawara is lodged in Tihar jail after having been convicted in 2007 for the 1995 assassination of the then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. In 2015, a Sarbat Khalsa organised by radical Sikh organisations in Punjab’s Amritsar had appointed Hawara jathedar of the Akal Takht—a move the SGPC refused to acknowlegde.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Khalistanis used organised crime to silence enemies in Canada. Who’s paying the price today?